Sunday, August 24, 2014

Welcome to another edition of Progressive Music Classics, a salute to left-leaning music that champions the cause of working-class people around the world.

The narrative of the Rich & Powerful and the corporate media was simple back in the day. When the Soviet Union died, we were told, socialism died. End of story.

In 1991, it was clearly time to bury Das Kapital in the landfill and embrace capitalism. The End of History, as Francis Fukuyama put it, was upon us.

However, a strange thing happened along the way to socialism's funeral.

First of all, decades of unregulated, brutal, dog-eat-dog "free" markets led to a spectacular growing divide between the classes. The Top One Percent saw its fortunes (and political influence) soar. The Middle Class pretty much died. And the poor grew vastly in number.

Once again, a lot of people started asking the question, "Is capitalism really the best system we can come up with?"

And the ideas of Karl Marx once again began to be debated. In fact, one of the surprise bestsellers of this year was Capital in the Twenty-First Century by French economist Thomas Piketty. It was an eye-opening book that basically served to update Marx's observations with current data.

Amazingly, for a relatively dry academic book, Capital soared to the top of the bestseller lists. Even the The Financial Times (hardly a lefty newspaper) had kind words to say about Piketty's book and admitted that he had raised important points.

It's clear that Piketty hit a nerve and raised important points about the failures of unregulated capitalism.

But wait a minute: haven't we already been through this whole debate before? Didn't socialism die back in 1991? Weren't we told that capitalism was the only way forward?

Well, actually no.

As British band The Mekons pointed out in their classic 1991 song, what was buried with the Soviet Union wasn't the real deal anyway. As The Mekons put it: "This Funeral is For the Wrong Corpse."

They're queuing up to dance on Socialism's grave,
This is my testimony,
a dinosaur's confession,
but how can something really be dead,
when it hasn't even happened?"
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Tuesday, August 12, 2014

A lot of great comics (Steve Martin, Woody Allen) pretty much left stand-up comedy behind when they went to Hollywood. But the great Robin Williams (1951-2014) not only never abandoned stand-up, he excelled at it all his life.

In stand-up mode, Williams was a true giant that towered above today's other puerile, mediocre talentless hacks, like Larry the Cable Guy and Dennis Miller.

On-stage, Williams was America's greatest Progressive Truth Teller since Bill Hicks. And unlike the relentlessly politically uncompromising Hicks, Williams was so damn funny that he had fans across the political spectrum. Since Williams died, I've chatted with a number of people, including Conservatives. Nobody I've yet talked to has said a word about Williams' politics.

In the video above, Williams is in fine stand-up form in a U.K. appearance shortly after the election of Barack Obama.

Williams brings the house down as he skewers the likes of George W. Bush, Sarah Palin and John McCain. His trademark hysterical rapid-fire delivery is a marvel to behold and he keeps up an astonishing pace of smart political comic turns and dozens of spot-on impersonations of the Rich & Powerful.

No matter what your political persuasion, it's hard not to laugh.

Smart political comedy just lost one of its greatest talents. The world is a more empty place now.

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About This Blog

Welcome to BeggarsCanBeChoosers.com, the progressive political blog of Marc McDonald. A Texas journalist, McDonald worked for 15 years for several newspapers, including the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, before he quit his day job and set up shop in cyberspace in 1995. McDonald's articles have appeared in a number of popular progressive Web sites, including Crooks and Liars, The Reaction, Buzzflash.com, Salon.com, OpEdNews.com, The Neil Rogers Show and The Raw Story. McDonald's Web articles have also been featured and reviewed by various national and international media, including CNN Headline News, the BBC, CBS, the Washington Post, USA Today and many more. On June 3, 2011, I was interviewed on the progressive radio program, "Voices at Work." Go here to hear my interview with host Ron Gonyea. I am always available for media interviews on progressive issues. Contact me here.